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I have never liked hollinger but here you go:
Updated: February 1, 2010, 1:04 PM ET
Spurs to surge or purge on road trip?
PER Diem: Feb. 1, 2010
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By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
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D. Clarke Evans/NBAE/Getty Images
The struggling Spurs will look to regroup on their annual "Rodeo Road Trip," which starts this Tuesday.
SAN ANTONIO -- I'm told it's been an unusually cold winter in south Texas, and certainly it was for my visit this weekend. In a roundabout way, that's probably a good place to start when we're talking about the Spurs.
While residents of more northern climes chortle at the notion of calling this a "cold snap," to the locals it seems very real -- something easily proven by strolling a nearly barren Riverwalk and seeing locals dressed like they were on a Siberian dogsledding trek because the mercury threatened to dip below 40.
Similarly, hearing the Spurs talk about their troubles has to set the league's other front offices guffawing. San Antonio has a better record than 21 of the league's other 29 teams, owns the league's seventh-best point differential and, despite employing several highly paid veterans, has maintained as much cap flexibility as any team in basketball.
Everything's relative, however, and the standards of recent history make this season's Spurs squad seem like a dismal failure. San Antonio is on pace to win 48 games, a mark that four teams (Clippers, Raptors, Wizards and Bobcats) haven't reached once in the past two decades and probably won't this season, either.
For those franchises, 48 wins would be cause for celebration. For the Spurs, however, 48 wins seems like a disaster -- it would be their third-worst regular season during the past two decades. The only times they've done worse during that span was 1991-92, when they won 47 games, and 1996-97, when everybody got injured and they won only 20 games but wound up winning the Tim Duncan lottery as a result.
"On pace" for 48 wins, however, is different from finishing with 48 wins, and the Spurs still have time to change their destiny for better or worse. And as it turns out, we're at a crucial juncture for the Spurs' season to veer in either direction, both for them and for the rest of the league. The direction their season goes over the next three weeks could determine whether the Spurs become buyers or sellers at the trade deadline.
Let's start with the glass-half-full approach. Tuesday starts their annual "Rodeo Road Trip," when the San Antonio rodeo boots the Spurs from their home arena for three weeks surrounding the All-Star break. San Antonio will play eight straight road games, and has only 12 of its final 36 contests at home. (Side note: Preparations had already begun Sunday. It was very odd to walk into an NBA arena and see the media parking lot converted into a stockyard, replete with giant placards reading "poultry" and "swine." Let's just say that next time through that lot I'm taking great care to watch where I step.)
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Clarke Evans/Getty Images
Good news, Spurs: Dice usually starts to roll right about now.
The good news about the Rodeo trip, however, is the Spurs' history. Historically, it's been when they've begun their late-season charge after laying in the weeds for more than half of the season.
One can make a case they're ready to make a similar move. While San Antonio's recent results are cause for concern, it has spent half a season assimilating seven new players and playing through injuries to Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. It's only now that the Spurs have really become comfortable with the pieces they have.
"With all the new players," said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, "it's probably the best thing that can happen to us, just be on our own without any distractions and see if we can shore up our defense and take care of the ball better because those have been our two bugaboos in the fourth quarters -- defensive lapses and turnovers. That's what we're trying to cure.
"It's been hard along the way, but at this point, we know better who we want on the floor in the fourth quarters [and] what combinations we like and don't like. So I'm hopeful that on this road trip we'll be able to use that knowledge and see where we are."
Let me provide one more specific piece of glass-half-full material: One of San Antonio's key players has historically performed vastly better in the second half of the season. Forward Antonio McDyess, who had his fourth straight double-figure scoring game Sunday after putting together just six in the first 41 games, has some of the most extreme splits in basketball over the past three seasons.
"We used to give him so much slack in Detroit," said Denver's Chauncey Billups, who played with McDyess for the Pistons, "because the first half of the season we'd be like, 'Where you at, Dice? Summer's over man, c'mon, let's go. Christmas has passed, it's Valentine's Day now, let's start playing.'"
Indeed, McDyess averaged a double-double with better than 50 percent shooting after Feb. 1 last season, and signs are he's rounding into similar form in San Antonio.
"That's what I've been told," Popovich said of McDyess' second-half pattern. "He's playing much more confidently now than he was at the beginning of the year. You see him making other moves besides jump shots, little deals under the bucket, offensive rebounds are getting better, that kind of thing, so if he's going to continue to improve on that, that would be great."
"This is about his time," Billups said. "He looked like the Dice I always knew. He makes that 15-, 16-foot jump shot, he rebounds, he plays good defense. He's just a great complementary role player, and if he's used the right way he's super valuable."
OK, now for the glass-half-empty approach. The Spurs lost at home for the fourth time in six games Sunday. They're playing without Parker for the moment while he recovers from an ankle sprain, and even when Parker returns he'll be limited by plantar fasciitis that won't heal until he takes the summer off. They have 24 of their final 36 games on the road, and several of them are against daunting opponents: They still play the Lakers three times; Denver, Orlando and Cleveland twice; and Boston and Atlanta once.
The Rodeo Trip itself isn't a daunting slate -- five of the eight opponents stand several miles south of .500 -- but the pressure is on to have a good trip because it's the Spurs' final chance to make a statement before the trade deadline.
While everyone presumes the Spurs will be buyers at the trade deadline -- they went "all-in" this summer by trading for Richard Jefferson and putting themselves well over the luxury-tax line -- it's becoming easier by the day to imagine the opposite scenario. If the Spurs decide they can't contend and this mix isn't worth paying the luxury tax to preserve, they have several expiring contracts other contenders might find useful (Ginobili, Matt Bonner, Roger Mason), not to mention an alluring veteran in the aforementioned McDyess.
We're still a good distance away from that scenario's coming to fruition, but no longer can it be dismissed out of hand. The Spurs historically turn the corner leading up to this road trip, but having lost six of nine games entering the trip, one wonders if they're turning the corner again -- only this time into a much sketchier neighborhood. It's all relative, sure, but the fact remains: The current edition doesn't seem to be the quality of Spurs teams to which the locals have grown accustomed.
